Arizona’s water future is cloudy, worried experts agree …By Tom Beal … Arizona Daily Star …Tucson, Arizona … Published: 09.24.2009 …Arizona’s water future won’t be like its past, and the past is bad enough. Water managers only recently came to terms with the fact that their predictions of future water supply were based on incomplete historical records that did not reckon with periodic decade-long droughts and at least one that lasted half a century.
At a conference of water and climate scientists put on by the University of Arizona on Wednesday, water managers from Arizona’s major cities said the future seems even more uncertain with predictions that climate change will further reduce flow from Arizona’s watersheds. New sources of water will be needed, but they won’t be available in time for the coming crunch, said David Modeer, general manager of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District. “In the West, it’s pretty much uncharted territory once you move closer to that abyss of not enough water,” Modeer said.

Modeer, former director of Tucson Water, said he didn’t think the Colorado River, which supplies 1.5 million acre-feet of water to Arizona communities each year, had a supply problem as recently as 1998. A 10-year drought and better studies of the hydrological record made it apparent that the flow in the Colorado was historically less than what is promised to the states that border it. “We know it’s over-allocated,” he said. Drought and a better understanding of the historical record have changed the game in Arizona’s other major watershed.

“Things are upside-down,” said John Sullivan of the Salt River Project, which has supplied Phoenix-area farms and communities with water from the Salt and Verde rivers for 106 years. “There are things going on. What it is, I’m not sure.” Sullivan said SRP has had to cut allocations to its customers only three times in its history — but two of them occurred this decade during the extended drought. Sullivan said the SRP commissioned a tree-ring study of the watershed, and researchers at the University of Arizona uncovered a water past much like that of the Colorado — periodic droughts of 12 to 13 years and one in the 1500s that lasted 50 years.

The water managers appeared at the annual meeting of SAHRA (Sustainability of Semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas), which hosted the event in conjunction with Biosphere 2, the Water Sustainability Program and the Institute of the Environment. The conference question was how to plan for a future when “stationarity” is dead. Stationarity, said U.S. Geological Survey senior scientist Julio Betancourt, allows you to predict future natural events “within a fluctuating but well-defined variability.” That notion died, he said, with the realization that climate change makes the future unpredictable. Sharon Megdal, who moderated the panel on the state’s water future, said she liked Yogi Berra’s definition: “The future ain’t what it used to be.” In an earlier presentation, Dennis Lettenmaier, a professor of hydrology at the University of Washington, noted that predictions for reduced flow in the Colorado River by 2050 ranged from 6 percent to 40 percent, depending on the climate models used, and called for better targeted studies of the Colorado’s watershed. “Forecasts are not useful to us. Forecasts are wrong,” said Tucson Water’s Ralph Marra. “We don’t have a good sense of what the future range of credible possibilities is.” Marra, the utility’s water administrator, said Tucson Water must plan for a wide range of scenarios. He called for more and better science and for cooperation among water users. Modeer and Tom Buschatzke of the city of Phoenix also warned of an additional price for climate change.

The CAP moves its water uphill to Phoenix and Tucson with energy from a coal-fired plant in northeastern Arizona. A carbon tax could add up to $200 an acre-foot to his water bill, said Buschatzke. That would trigger a 13 percent rate increase on top of the regular annual increases, he said. “There will be some City Council people twitching,” he said. … Contact reporter Tom Beal at 573-4158 or tbeal@azstarnet.com

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE . . . When do governmental agencies and government officials just give us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, it’s so much easier than the shell game they choose to attempt to perpetuate…?

… “Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstances” …

… I am most willing to present and discuss any water issue with any audience in Arizona where open full disclosure and two way dialog is permitted. …

Respectfully submitted,

Filed under: Blogroll | Comments Off on JUST GIVE US THE TRUTH…IS THAT ASKING TOO MUCH…?

Now we know why they’ve stopped calling this health care reform, and started calling it insurance reform. The current bills advancing in Congress look more like rearranging the deck chairs on the insurance Titanic than actually ending our long health care nightmare.

Some laudable elements are in various versions of the bills, especially expanding Medicaid, cutting the private insurance-padding waste of Medicare Advantage, and limiting the ability of the insurance giants to ban and dump people who have been or who ever will be sick.
But, overall, the leading bills and the President’s proposal are, like the dog that didn’t bark, more notable for what is missing. Here are 13 problems with the current health care bills (partial list):

2. Insurance companies will continue to be able to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.

3. No restrictions on insurance denials of care that insurers don’t want to pay for. In case you missed it, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee uncovered data on the California Department of Managed Care website recently that found six of the biggest California insurers rejected, on annual average, more than one-fifth of all claims every year since 2002.

4. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas, where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.

5. A massive government bailout for the insurance industry through the combination of the individual mandate requiring everyone not covered to buy insurance, public subsidies which go for buying insurance, no regulation on what insurers can charge, and no restrictions on their ability to decide what claims to pay.

6. No controls on drug prices. The White House deal with Big Pharma, which won bipartisan approval in the Senate Finance Committee, opposes the use of government leverage to negotiate real cost controls on inflated drug prices.

7. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to care still determined by ability to pay.

8. Tax on comprehensive insurance plans. That will encourage employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote proliferation of bare-bones, high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care and medical bankruptcies.

9. Not universal. Some people will remain uncovered, including those exempted, and undocumented workers, denying them treatment, exposing everyone to communicable diseases and inflating health care costs.

10. No definition of covered benefits.

11. No protection for our public safety net. Public hospitals and clinics will continue to be under-funded and a dumping ground for those the private system doesn’t want. Public monies going to hospitals serving low-income communities will be shifted to subsidies for private insurance.

12. Long delay in implementation. Many reforms don’t go into effect until 2013.

13. Nothing changes in basic structure of the system; health care remains a privilege, not a right.
We may be slow learners, but the rest of the industrial world has figured it out: Universal, single-payer or national health care systems. That’s the reason why all those other countries cover everyone, have better patient outcomes, cause no one to declare bankruptcy or lose their homes because of medical bills, and spend less than half per capita on health care than we do.

We could do it too, by reducing the starting age for Medicare from 65 to 0. There’s still time to act.

Call on your Congress member to support the vote coming up on the House floor on the Anthony Weiner amendment to protect, expand and improve Medicare for All. Senators have the same opportunity in a vote on Senate bill 703, being offered as a floor amendment by Senator Bernie Sanders.

Democrats must also ensure that whatever bill passes includes a provision enabling states to set up their own single-payer systems. These votes are the true litmus tests of the Democrats’ commitment to guaranteeing health care for all, and finally solving our health care crisis.

I realize many of my “red” Republican readers find Michael Moore essentially persona-non-grata, I do invite you to make the time to look as his film … SICKO … checking out the information he presents to determine if it is valid, then taking another look at the utter deceitfulness being perpetrated upon us by the 535 current members of the US Congress.

I believe it worthy at this time to consider these lines from the motion picture … V … which I have chosen to modify … “While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?” “Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression, and where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well, certainly there are those who are more responsible than others. And they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it? I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you. And in your panic, you turned to Washington politicians who promised you order and peace. And all they demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.”

For me … Mark Twain … summed it up succinctly … what do you think, was he correct …?

Remember “we” elected them to their office and in choosing to occupy that office they swore an oath … “to serve and to protect” … you and me, not for-profit-corporate-interest$

… “Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstances” …

… I am most willing to present and discuss any water issue with any audience in Arizona where open full disclosure and two way dialog is permitted. …

Here is a song that was sung by schoolchildren during the 2006 White House Easter Egg Roll (source: Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2006):

Our country’s stood beside us
People have sent us aid.
Katrina could not stop us, our hopes will never fade.
Congress, Bush and FEMA
People across our land
Together have come to rebuild us and we join them hand-in-hand!

The words were sung by children from the Gulf region. Why didn’t the left rise up and scream at this obvious and insidious case of party indoctrination? Why didn’t we send hate mail and make angry phone calls to the schools? Why were our threats not enough to have police positioned around the school out of fear that an outraged leftie might want to harm someone?

Oh, I remember. We don’t pull stunts like that.

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE . . . Why is it that “we” refuse to hold the Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobb accountable and responsible for their reprehensible vitriolic reporting on air ways owned by … you and me … that’s right “we” own the airways and grant permission to use it to others.

And we can just as easily refuse to grant permission to anyone whose conduct is as reprehensible as theirs…

… “Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstances” …

… I am most willing to present and discuss any water issue with any audience in Arizona where open full disclosure and two way dialog is permitted. …

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN …NEW YORK TIMES …Published: September 29, 2009 …WASHINGTON — After a half-day of animated debate, the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday rejected efforts by liberal Democrats to add a government-run health insurance plan to major health care legislation, dealing the first official setback to an idea that many Democrats, including President Obama, say they support.

All of the other versions of the health care legislation advancing in Congress — a bill approved by the Senate health committee and a trio of bills in the House — include some version of the government-run plan, or public option.

But the Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, long ago removed it from his proposal because of stiff opposition from Republicans who call the public plan a step toward “socialized medicine.”

The committee on Tuesday afternoon voted, 15 to 8, to reject an amendment proposed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, to add a public option called the Community Choice Health Plan, an outcome that underscored the lack of support for a government plan among many Democrats.

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE . . . It’s time for NEW congressional leadership for the Democrats … GOOD-BYE … Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi …

What is interesting is not one of these elected politicians is willing to give up their special version of 100% publicly funded health care but they are sure willing to fall on the sword to deny the same to you and me, why…?

Essentially, these 535 elected Washington D.C. congressional politicians are telling you and me … to kiss their while they covertly cover their own butt … and guess what, so far we’re buying it … all the while politely not asking for them to disclose a damn thing to us.

… “Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstances” …

… I am most willing to present and discuss any water issue with any audience in Arizona where open full disclosure and two way dialog is permitted. …

It certainly appears as though Iran will NOT be offered keys to the secret clubhouse nor shown the double secret handshake of the members of the “nuclear” club…?

After all it just would not do to invite a rogue, like Iran, into this select society as certainly its current members always act with decorum and thoughtfully.
America’s middle east agent – Israel – has always only acted humanely when dealing with its neighbors and would not seek to use nuclear devices on any of them, would they…?

And moreover all the current members of this “good-old-boy’s-club” kept the world informed as they developed their own nuclear capabilities, right…?

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE . . .
I do not seek to expand nuclear armament, but, to have any of the current “club” members scream about “secrecy” is a damn joke…
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – —
… People should never be afraid of their government, government should always be afraid of the people …

… “Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstances” …

… I am most willing to present and discuss any water issue with any audience in Arizona where open full disclosure and two way dialog is permitted. …

By Garance Franke-Ruta … excerpted … Katie Couric picked a traffic magnet for her inaugural installment of @katiecouric, a new weekly “Web show” from the CBS Evening News anchor.

Fox News host Glenn Beck, whose ratings and profile have soared this year as he has pummeled the Obama administration and become a rabble-rousing protest organizer, once again demonstrated his flair for creating viral new media moments, if the widely reproduced advance video excerpt from the show is any indication.

“John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama,” Beck told Couric.

He also said that he might have cast his vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton rather than McCain if he had been faced with a choice between the two.

… “Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstances” …

… I am most willing to present and discuss any water issue with any audience in Arizona where open full disclosure and two way dialog is permitted. …

Respectfully submitted,

Filed under: Blogroll | Tagged: neocon | Comments Off on Is John McCain no longer the “neocon” darling…?

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE . . . Perhaps “Flash” can find a way to work these tidbits to follow into his discussion with others encouraging them to invest in his community…? I say his, as there is no mention that “Flash” is promoting the “metro” area or the State but rather his own backyard, right…?

OK … #1 … they can pay cheap wages as our student’s rank #93 so they won’t know the difference.

#2 … they can save on health insurance as only 1 in 5 is covered by any form of health care and “hizzoner” has not made health care a Phoenix priority.

#3 … and from the good folks in Dubai … Phoenix can learn the intricacies of the white slave marketing

#4 …and from Mexico “hizzoner” can extend the key to the city to those who Sheriff Joe is so fond of making a target for his next made for TV spot

#5 …and to Saudi Arabia … “hizzoner” can get another perspective on crowd control, hey a beheading in front of City Hall would be most captivating and it would flat guarantee to get you international press your name and image splashed world wide.

I find it insulting to suggest there is any benefit to the taxpayers, residents and citizens of Phoenix to have Mayor Gordon don his “Flash Gordon” flying cape as if his venture will have lasting value to the folks requesting City assistance to obtain compliance on odor from Fisher Asphalt in South Phoenix or those currently unemployed or those wanting to know why Phoenix has funds to send “Flash” around the world, but it cuts funding to libraries, shuts community swimming pools, restricts afterschool care, chooses not to address the homeless problem and a host of other LOCAL issues. But, these local issues won’t get “Flash” on CNN, Fox or other mass media news…?

… “Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstances” …

… I am most willing to present and discuss any water issue with any audience in Arizona where open full disclosure and two way dialog is permitted. …